The Australian Government must utilise its legislative, regulatory and spending powers to ensure all Australian workplaces create safe, secure, flexible and equitable work opportunities that support women’s economic participation.
Immediate actions
3.1. Implement all the Respect@Work and Set the Standard Report recommendations and monitor their impact in proactively facilitating safe workplaces for Australian women.
3.2. Build the supply of good, secure jobs for women and address insecure work by providing stronger protections for workers employed in insecure work.
3.3. Boost the availability of high-quality flexible working (rather than precarious forms); strengthen the rights of employees to flexible work and family-friendly working arrangements; introduce workplace protections for reproductive health, e.g., the ability to request flexible working arrangements; and implement reasonable adjustments and take new forms of leave.
3.4. Harmonise anti-discrimination and industrial legislation to include positive, enforceable legal duties on employers to eliminate discrimination and harassment and advance gender equality, including a positive duty on employers to reasonably accommodate the needs of workers who are pregnant and/or have family responsibilities.
3.5. Ensure that minimum and award wage setting processes take into account what would be considered an appropriate living wage for employees.
3.6. Encourage employers to set gender equality targets and strengthen the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reporting obligations to include meaningful benchmarks against which to measure progress towards gender equality year-on-year.
3.7. Strengthen the capacity of women to access representation from appropriate organisations and services when they wish to take action regarding discrimination within industrial jurisdictions.
This means ensuring that important institutions such as the Office of the Sex Discrimination Commission and the specialist panels in the Fair Work Commission are appropriately resourced to meet demand.
3.8 Ensure that government funding of sectors and services facilitates the availability of high-quality and secure work in these areas. This will mean that funding is adequate to support living wages, decent work and the capacity to progress and develop in careers, e.g., in the early-childhood education and care, aged care and disability support sectors.
Supporting information
All Australians deserve to feel safe in their workplace. Many women are still not safe at work, and this has long-term negative impacts on their health, wellbeing, career progression and economic equality.
A study by Deloitte Access Economics found that workplace sexual harassment cost the Australian economy an estimated $3.8 billion in 2018, with each case of harassment representing around four working days of lost output. [81]
Over half (51 per cent) of all people interviewed as part of the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces and who worked in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces have experienced at least one incident of bullying, sexual harassment or actual/attempted sexual assault in a Commonwealth parliamentary workplace. [82] In addition to this, over three-quarters (77 per cent) of people working in these workplaces experienced, witnessed or heard about bullying, sexual harassment and/or actual or attempted sexual assault in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces. [83]
The Government is committed to implementing all 28 recommendations of the Set the Standard report. In August 2023, it introduced a Bill to establish the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service as an independent statutory agency.
It is critical that women in all Australian workplaces have somewhere to turn to if they are experiencing discrimination or harassment in the workplace. The Government has committed $32 million to establish Working Women’s Centres in all states and territories. These will provide free advice and assistance to women on issues including workplace sexual harassment, discrimination and wage theft. [84]
Insecure and casual work can create issues around sufficient and predictable hours and job security. This can impact people’s quality of life with regards to the ability to balance work and family and care responsibilities, connections with community, and individual wellbeing. While casual work can offer flexibility to manage unpaid caring responsibilities, it’s also often less secure and lower paid, with less opportunity for career progression. [85]
Women’s employment types
- As of June 2023, Women made up 39.3 per cent of all full-time workers and 67.3 per cent of all part-time workers.[86]
- As of May 2023, women represent 53.2 per cent of all casual employees.[87]
- As of August 2022, women make up 61.5 per cent of all employees on a fixed-term contract.[88]
- Part-time and casual work offer flexibility to manage unpaid caring responsibilities, but are also less secure and lower paid, with less opportunity for career progression.
Women are more likely to be in casual or insecure work. [89] Rates of insecure work in Australia are higher amongst cohorts who are socially and economically disadvantaged, including women, young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, migrants, and people with disability. [90]
Remote working and other flexible working practices can be key enablers of gender equality, supporting more women to stay in the workforce, and more men to take on a greater share of caring responsibilities. Mainstreaming flexible work to attract and retain diverse talent is crucial to future-proofing the workplace and the Australian economy. [91]
Women are nearly three times more likely to use a flexible working arrangement to manage caring responsibilities than men (80 per cent compared to 28 per cent). [92] Women with young children are much more likely to be working flexibly (part-time, flexible working arrangements or from home) than men with young children.
About 80 per cent of mothers with a child under two who had returned to work were using some form of flexible working arrangement to manage caring responsibilities, compared to just 28 per cent of fathers and partners. Moreover, more than three-quarters of women with a child under two who work flexibly are working part-time, compared to 11 per cent for men. [93]
Organisations such as Chief Executive Women have long advocated for improved policy settings to improve women’s workforce participation and experiences.[94] This includes universal and quality ECEC, providing superannuation for carers, extending the Commonwealth Paid Parental Scheme to promote shared care, increasing the role of women in leadership and tackling workplace sexual harassment. These are necessary inputs to create safe and secure work for women.
Male-dominated industries are much more likely to employ full-time workers than part-time or casual workers; industries such as mining, agriculture, fishing and forestry, transport, postal and warehousing have the highest average full-time hours. [95] An Australian Human Rights Commission report released prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, found 27 per cent of men who worked flexibly reported experiencing discrimination for being ‘less dedicated’ to their careers.
Men are penalised financially for taking up flexible work, with men who work part-time having lower rates of pay on average that women who work part time. [96] Men are also much more likely to have their request for flexibility denied, (17.4 per cent compared to 9.8 per cent for women). [97]
In 2021-22, 82 per cent of organisations reporting to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) had a formal policy on flexibility. [98] While access to most forms of flexibility has remained relatively constant since 2001, access to remote working increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued to grow. [99] Nearly 70 per cent of men and women agree that men taking up flexible arrangements is critical to reduce stigma around flexibility, make flexibility less detrimental to those who use it, and encourage take up. [100] WGEA data shows that in 2019, while 70 per cent of workplaces had a flexible work policy in place, only two per cent had targets for men’s engagement in flexible work. [101]
The impacts of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill
The Government recently passed the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Act 2022.
This legislation amends the Fair Work Act to change a number of existing rules and introduces a range of new workplace laws. From 6 June 2023, the right to request flexible working arrangements also applies to:
- Employees, or a member of their immediate family or household, experiencing family and domestic violence; and
- Employees who are pregnant
Employers also have new obligations before they can refuse a request from an employee for a flexible working arrangement.
Female-dominated sectors in Australia tend to be lower paid, particularly in those industries where workforce roles are ‘gendered’ such as early childhood education and care, disability care, aged care and education. The societal undervaluation of women’s work and contributions has carried over to how the care economy workforce is remunerated and valued by employers and institutions. In 2022, industry and occupation gender segregation accounted for 24 per cent of the gender pay gap. [102]
Minimum and award wage boost
Following the Government’s submission advocating for a real increase for Australia’s low-paid workers, the Fair Work Commission decided to increase both the national minimum wage and the modern award minimum wages by 5.75 per cent, commencing from 1 July 2023
The Government’s submission (31 March 2023) recommended the Commission ensure the real wages of Australia’s low-paid workers do not go backwards. The submission noted high inflation and weak wages growth are reducing real wages across the economy and creating cost-of-living pressures for low-paid workers. The Panel’s decision will directly affect employees that are paid the national minimum wage rate and those whose pay is set by one of the 121 modern awards.
Aged care workers
On 4 November 2022, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) made an interim decision to grant a 15 per cent increase to minimum wages for aged care workers. The FWC accepted the valuation of work is influenced by social expectations and gendered assumptions about the role of women as workers. From 1 July 2023, the Government will fund a 15 per cent increase to minimum wages for many aged care workers including registered nurses, enrolled nurses, assistants in nursing, personal care workers, home care workers, recreational activity officers and head chefs and cooks.
These wage boosts will mainly benefit women, who make up the majority of aged care workers. The gender pay gap for aged and disabled carers, nursing support and personal care workers is 16 per cent.
A study by Deloitte Access Economics found that workplace sexual harassment cost the Australian economy an estimated $3.8 billion in 2018, with each case of harassment representing around four working days of lost output. [81]
The Review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 found stakeholders supported substantial strengthening to the minimum standards for gender reporting as a mechanism to drive change towards gender equality. [103] There were concerns that progress is not happening fast enough and the current bar for compliance is too low. [104]
In line with these broad views, recent comparative research on gender pay gap reporting recommended that action plans are essential for change, finding that ‘employers should be mandated to create time-bound targets to redress pay gaps, setting out clear and measurable goals’. [105] Companion research recommended that Australia introduce ‘outcome-based’ minimum standards.[106]
The Review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 recommended steps to bridge the ‘action gap’ to strengthen the existing minimum standards by amending legislation to require relevant employers with 500 or more employees to commit to, achieve and report to WGEA on measurable targets to improve gender equality in their workplace. The Government has committed to implementing all recommendations from the Review.